End Game Extract

An extract from the opening of my new story, End Game. If anyone wants to help by offering feedback on the full story it is in the next post, password protected. Drop me a line and I will forward a password. damiengwalter@gmail.com

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Harvard names it a low risk run once too often. The fence makes his fat lipped grin as Spaceman memorises the number at a glance. He should take a walk up Main Street, get lost in the plate glass maze of store fronts and rich women, he knows it. But work is work, and besides, he always gets a game on when he visits the Algerian.

Spaceman steps off the tram two stops early, skips across four lanes of traffic and the central reservation, expert navigator of this outpost of the monoculture, this anyplace cloned from the flesh of London, New York, Beijing. He comes up on the tower from behind, sliding in through a fissure in the rusting chain-link.

They answer the buzzer fast. The Algerian and his boys toke hard and sleep late, but this morning the door opens quick. They do not even ask his name. Spaceman’s feet go heavy like lead. He could be standing on the surface of another planet, mass three times as great, weighed down by a crushing gravity. A girl shoulders her way out of the tower, pushing a buggy in front. Spaceman looks at a baby swaddled in pink, bright and grimy nylon. The girls eyes return him a dead addict stare. No more thinking Spaceman, time to go to work.